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It took the consent of hundreds of parents before cameras were allowed into a Dunboyne school to film a documentary. What’s it been like for those who took part?

The principal at the centre of RTÉ’s new documentary series, The School, has expressed concern that the first programme is too negative, focusing on students with learning and behaviour difficulties who are “unrepresentative” of the 970-strong student body at large. “To represent a school you naturally have to deal with difficult issues, but the first episode was disproportionate to the level of problems in the school,” says Eamonn Gaffney, principal of St Peter’s Community College at Dunboyne in Co Meath, which received €10,000 from Scratch Films’s production budget after the school had agreed to make the series and after filming had already started.